Mr
...about a poor boy who became a prince? If you would like I can tell you as good a story as that a true story about a poor boy who became president—and that is better than being a prince. The boy I am going to speak about was as poor as any one that ever lived in America: but he rose to a grander position than any prince or king ever reached. Listen to the story of his life. There was once a very poor man who lived in a miserable little log cabin in the wild part of what was then called "away out West." It was on a stony, weedy hillside, at a place called Nolin's Creek, in the State of Kentucky. In that log cabin, on the twelfth day of February, in the year 1809, a little baby was born. He was named Abraham Lincoln.
I don't believe you ever saw a much poorer or meaner place in which to be born and brought up than that little log cabin. Abraham Lincoln's father was ignorant and lazy. He could not read and he hated to work. Their house had no windows, it had no floor, it had none of the things you have in your pleasant homes. In all America no baby was ever born with fewer comforts and poorer surroundings than little Abraham Lincoln. He grew from a baby to a homely little boy, and to a homelier young man. His clothes never fitted him; he never, in all his life, went to school but one year; he had to work hard, he could play but little, and many a day he knew what it was to be cold and hungry and almost homeless. But with all this he had that in him which makes a man great.
His father kept moving about from place to place, living almost always in the wild regions. He went from Kentucky to Indiana and then to Illinois. Sometimes their home would be a log cabin, sometimes it was just a hut with only three sides boarded up. Abraham Lincoln was a neglected and forlorn little fellow. His mother died when he was only eight years old. Then Abraham and his sister Sarah...
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